


Catch Me (Cause We're Both Falling)

by peanutbutterpianist



Series: Firsts Are Complicated (Should They Be?) [9]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Anxiety, Comfort/Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Injuries, Panic Attacks, Post-Canon, Self-Hatred, Victor's Potty Mouth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-15
Updated: 2017-04-15
Packaged: 2018-10-19 03:32:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10631259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peanutbutterpianist/pseuds/peanutbutterpianist
Summary: "Victor preened at the sight: alluring, flirtatious, charming smile on the outside, pissed off and annoyed on the inside. He blinked and saw his face shift further, flush fading from his cheeks and the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes smoothing out until his skin looked like flawless porcelain.He looked fabulous."Victor clings to his frustration to hide the guilt brewing in his gut. Yuuri is having a panic attack in the bathroom, but Victor is certain he can't help the matter.Who would ever guess that Victor himself would need rescuing?





	

**Author's Note:**

> First Rescue.
> 
> Not First Fight. Because fights happen all the time in healthy relationships, no big deal.
> 
> But let's be real: anxiety is a bitch, panic attacks suck, and fighting with your loved one in the middle of it all is The Worst.

            Victor almost turned around.

Keyword: _almost_. It took all of Victor’s legendary stubbornness and a dash of week-long-simmering frustration to cling to the anger of his outburst and stalk out the door with his proverbial tail held high.

            It was a stupid fight, really, and he knew it. Yuuri was upset at him for forgetting to do the dishes again last night, and for leaving his laundry out on the bedroom floor. And for not locking the door behind himself when he took Makkachin for their morning walk. All little things. Not worth yelling about, right?

And _fuck,_ since when did Yuuri—soft-spoken, baby-bird-eyed, faun-like _Yuuri freaking Katsuki_ —yell? Ever? Let alone at _Victor Nikiforov._ Seriously, _what the hell?_

            Okay, admittedly there was that one time at the Cup of China. But Yuuri had been crying then, too: big gobs of messy tears and…

            Well, he’d been deep in the grip of anxiety, then. And Victor, helpless as to what to _do about_ _it_ , had admittedly gone and _made things worse_. So there had been an actual _reason_ for Yuuri to yell, back then.

            Which is exactly why for a split second, it was so _hard_ for Victor to slam the door behind himself. Because Yuuri’s voice had dropped to a pitiful, breathless whine, sounding so, _so scared_ , with a “Victor, wait, don’t go,” slipping past his chapped, raw-looking lips.

            It was like a strike of lightning to Victor’s core: intensely painful, foreboding, screaming the word _disaster_ , and gone in a flash.

            Gone because Victor put it out of his mind with every _ounce_ of caffeine-fueled fire running through his bones, and set off for the rink to start practicing. Yakov would have his head if he was late again, which was likely, because this _stupid fight_ they were having had cost him nearly ten minutes, so he had to sprint to make up for lost time.

Victor gritted his teeth as the cold air tore at his throat and bit at his nose. He wouldn’t have to run like this if it hadn’t been for their _stupid fight_ making him late. He’d even left his _gloves_ behind, and his fingertips were already feeling like popsicles. Victor hissed at the sensation. The more he tended to even that little bit of bitterness, the more he was able to put Yuuri’s face and Yuuri’s voice out of his head by stroking at his frustration, the less he felt the nauseous ache seeping into his ribs as trotted he up to the rink. He swept his hair back as he paused at the door and brushed any stray sweat from his brow, trying to re-set his face into something neutral. He caught his reflection in the glass of the doors and smirked inwardly, a sour sort of pleasure settling into his gut at the sight: _success_. No would know he was upset.

Wait, no; he wasn’t upset.

He _wasn’t_ upset. Yuuri was just being a finicky jerk.

He was…something else.

Victor dug around for another emotion.

_Pissed?_

That would work. That was acceptable.

He took a long breath, gazing at his own eyes reflected in the glass until they looked back at him flatly. He painted on a smile with practiced ease, like slipping on his favorite, well-worn Italian leather gloves.

Victor preened at the sight: alluring, flirtatious, _charming_ smile on the outside, pissed off and annoyed on the inside. He blinked and saw his face shift further, flush fading from his cheeks and the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes smoothing out until his skin looked like flawless porcelain. He looked _fabulous_.

No one would ever know he was _pissed_.

There, _perfect_. Just like old times.

            His warm-ups weren’t bad at all, but it was a little odd only getting curious looks from the other skaters instead of glancing up to catch Yuuri’s enamored gaze from the sidelines. Yuuri _always_ came with him, even though he started his own practice later; the Japanese skater would watch Victor warm up with a soft, peaceful look brushed across his face, cheeks rosy from their walk to the rink. He’d eventually head to the gym to stretch and do some light freeweight work, allowing Victor the space he needed to hone his focus under his own coach’s direction without distraction. When he’d return near the end of Victor’s practice session with Yakov, all zipped up in Victor’s jacket, which hung too-loose and too-long, he’d toss Victor a water bottle and a snack. The sight always did strange and wonderful things to Victor’s heart.

            But Yuuri surely wouldn’t be there to watch him warm up today. _Of course not_. Yuuri was too busy being too _sensitive_ and upset and easily offended. Over _nothing_. It wasn’t Victor’s fault for feeling badgered; it wasn’t Victor’s fault that he’d lashed back a little. Things happened. And Yuuri took things way too seriously. He always did.

Victor zipped through a few sweeping figure eights and three impeccable spins before seeking Yakov with taut shoulders and impatience on the tip of his tongue.

            About halfway through his practice, when he tried to reason whether it was actually worth fighting Yakov on the number of flips he wanted in the second half of his program, there was a small commotion from the far end of the rink. Mila had darted to the side of the ice, chattering quickly with an irate-looking Yurio. Nothing new there. But why weren’t they practicing seriously by now? It almost looked like they were _leaving_.

            _What the hell?_

            Oh, _that’s_ why they were heading to the ledge: Yuuri had shown up. Finally.

            _God,_ he looked awful. His skin was as pale as the white sheets of their bed; like sushi rice, like the clouds in Yokohama on a summer day, like the small clutch of white hairs on Makkachin’s neck that betrayed his age. His eyes were as big as saucers, but he didn’t seem to see too well, even behind his glasses, judging by how he kept tripping over his own two feet and bumbling into walls and doors.

Normally he’d wave at Victor with a broad smile, eyes crinkled, and murmur a warm, heavily-accented _privyet_ to Yurio and Mila and Georgi, if he could get the elder man’s attention. On good days, he would even approach Yakov, sometimes with a cup of black coffee in hand as a peace offering. But Yuuri was silent, sneaking away directly toward the gym without greeting anyone.

            Something _had_ to be wrong. Really, _really_ wrong. Something in Victor’s gut clenched. Even if Yuuri was mad at him, he surely wouldn’t take out that frustration on anyone else. _Never._ Victor remembered their parting earlier in the morning: Yuuri’s voice came back to him, so much like in the car park at the Cup of China… _so much_ like at the Cup of China.

            _Shit._ Had Yuuri’s anxiety been gnawing at him again? Was that why he’d blown up at Victor?

            Was that why he’d sounded so _groundless_ when Victor left the apartment without him?

            _Shit._

Victor shifted gears into _What’s-Yuuri-Thinking-Mode_ automatically, combing through his own actions and words and trying to squeeze them into the mind of someone who felt like they didn’t belong, weren’t wanted, and weren’t good enough.

            Not that he ever was; Yuuri was…well, Yuuri was _Yuuri_. Which should say _everything_ because as far as Victor was concerned, it did. But because Yuuri was _Yuuri_ , his anxious mind sometimes put things through such _awful_ filters. Victor never could quite understand _why_ or _how_. On most days, it broke Victor’s heart, but this morning, it had only frustrated him.

            He didn’t want to be in _What’s-Yuuri-Thinking-Mode._ That was a place appropriate for late nights when Yuuri woke up from nightmares, or after long days when he was feeling insecure, or during difficult, frustration-laden practices after too many flubbed jumps. Not when Victor was supposed to be _pissed off at him._

            So he’d left his laundry out. What was the big deal there? Okay, Yuuri had bugged him about it a few times this week…and admittedly, Victor himself had skidded across the floor in the hall on a stray undershirt on Tuesday, knocking into Makkachin and dropping the water glass he’d been carrying. It took a while to safely get up all the shards of glass and keep Makkachin from stepping in any of them.

            Maybe Yuuri was just worried about Victor and Makkachin’s safety…

            But it didn’t give Yuuri the right to _nag_!

            Okay…what about the dishes? Maybe that was just an annoyance. It was, admittedly, their unspoken agreement that since Yuuri usually made dinner, Victor would take care of the dishes. Victor had never neglected dish-duty before, but he’d been extra tired all week—Yakov was pushing him, and he hadn’t been sleeping particularly well the past few days. So a couple of days of dirty dishes in the sink? Definitely not yell-worthy.

            Oh, but wait. Victor had _never_ forgotten to do the dishes before. Until the past week. He’d left them undone…what, four times in six days? It was unusual, sure.

            Yuuri didn’t do too well with change, Victor knew _._

            _Shit._ Moving on.

What was the third thing again? Oh yeah; what _actually_ set Yuuri off was that Victor had left the front door unlocked when he left to walk Makkachin. But he’d gone out extra early for that, for _Yuuri’s_ benefit! He was out of the house by five, awakened by a text from Chris and unable to fall back asleep, so he’d been kind enough to slip out of bed quietly and leave Yuuri sleeping peacefully…

            Wait.

            Victor didn’t want to put himself in Yuuri’s shoes, but his brain kept charging ahead anyway, fueled by the itching in his chest. He slowed his spins, realizing he’d kept them up too long and could end up getting dizzy.

            Yuuri would have woken up to an empty bed, an empty apartment, and was probably startled. He would have peeked into the bathroom and the living room and the kitchen, and looked for notes, and checked his phone for texts, and…

            And he would have seen the unlocked front door and realized he was alone and vulnerable. _Anyone_ could have come in while he slept. Or Victor could have inexplicably taken Makkachin and his phone and wallet and _left_ and _not cared_ about whether Yuuri was safe or not because _of course he wouldn’t care, Victor_ _left him_ , _Victor was always going to end up leaving eventually._

            Victor could hear the words in Yuuri’s sleep-deprive, hoarse whipsers inside his own head; he’d overheard several variations of them, muffled through the bathroom door late at night on two separate occasions since they’d come to St. Petersburg.

            _Shit._ It was starting to seem all too _easy_ to understand Yuuri would have freaked out. Victor stopped skating completely, chest throbbing uncomfortably and guilt prickling at the back of his neck under the collar of his t-shirt.

            But Yuuri was here, somewhere. Yuuri had made it safely to the rink, and it didn’t look like he’d been crying. So maybe Victor _was_ digging too deep; maybe Yuuri really had just been an oversensitive, nagging _jerk_ earlier.

Yuuri was probably just fine. He was irritated earlier, he blew up; Victor retaliated with some words that were less than kind, sure; but they were both here and could at least _try_ to go through their day professionally instead of milling around like a couple of dramatic teenagers. Yurio and Mila did a solid enough job of that regularly, anyway.

            Victor locked away any trepidation that tickled the front of his brain, shoving it all into a far corner and returning to working out some little details of his program.

It was just about ten, Victor noted as he glanced at the clock on the far wall, ignoring Yurio’s angry sputter as they passed one another, almost brushing elbows. He couldn’t deal with _two_ Yuris being upset with him, not right now.

Yuuri would normally come trotting out of the locker room by now, bright-eyed and a little breathless. He’d smile shyly, ready to start his own warm ups on the ice under Victor’s wandering eye until Yakov turned his attention to Yurio and Victor was freed to metamorphose to fit the role coach.

But Yuuri was nowhere to be seen. Maybe he was just taking a bit longer, since he’d gotten a late start.

Wait, _no_. Yuuri wouldn’t ever do that. He values Victor’s time as his coach, and would never _dream_ of keeping him waiting; he’d _never_ been late since leaving Hasetsu. Ever. Not even out of spite. Not even out of fear of confrontation after some other insignificant, small spat they’d had before practice. Yuuri was remarkably good at keeping their personal relationship separate from their roles as pupil and coach whenever they’d fought before. But it was about to strike ten, and Yakov was already starting to work with Yurio, dragging him off the ice to berate the boy for not stretching enough before launching into triples.

So…where was Yuuri?

This time Mila approached, and she looked just as angry as Yurio had been twenty minutes ago. Victor couldn’t ignore _her_ in such a state.

“What did you _do_?” she demanded, her hair a fiery halo that she tossed back with one hand, the other set at her hip. She looked a bit like a devil in that moment, like something out of a particularly colorful biblical illumination.

Victor flashed her a perfect pearly-white, media-pleasing _bullshit_ smile. “Good morning, Mila! What on earth are you talking about?”

She was having none of his pleasantries. “What did you do to _Yuuritchka_?” The name rolled off her tongue sharply, almost awkwardly—she called Yuuri something different every week, but Victor couldn’t bring himself to laugh at her this time.

Something stabbed along Victor’s collarbone and bit at the vertebrae in his neck. “I didn’t _do_ anything to him!” Victor spat, composure gone in a flash. “For your information, _he_ picked a fight with _me_ over something insignificant. If he can’t come out and face his own _coach_ ,” he drawled out the word, “then that’s his own problem.” Victor felt something in deep in his chest prickle, squeezing at his heart as he spoke.

 _Hah_. So now he was throwing Yuuri under the bus to save face, apparently. What the hell was he _doing_? Victor felt like he was betraying some part of his soul for a moment.

Well, he kind of was. At least it wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling.

“Victor, he’s been in the locker room almost this whole time, holed up in a stall, looking like someone beat him with a stick or something.” The words slapped Victor across the face, and Mila’s face took on a strange look he’d never seen on her before. “Even Yurio couldn’t get him to come out. He asked both of us to leave him alone, but I think something’s really wrong. None of us know what to do.”

 _Shit_. Yuuri was having a damn _panic attack_.

Victor turned and left the conversation without another word, not trusting himself to keep watching the awful play of expressions Mila was serving him. He thrust himself into another run-through of his program. There was nothing he could do for Yuuri now anyway, right? They were _fighting_.

Yuuri probably wouldn’t let Victor anywhere near him. Victor might even make things worse—he knew that he tended to do that even at the best of times, when Yuuri’s love for him was as bright and glaringly obvious as the morning sun in St. Petersburg in the spring through their east-facing window and—

Oh _shit_.

The mental image made it a little hard to breathe; why did his brain have to go and _do_ those sort of things unbidden? Now he just wanted to go _home_ , to go back a few hours and stop their argument from progressing and _not walk out the door_ and just be tucked into Yuuri’s chest again, watching the sunrise from the warmth and safety of their bed.

 _Damn it._ Victor shook his head, dismissing the thoughts like he would a swarm of gnats. They might not _quite_ disperse and leave him alone, but nothing was worse than wanting something and knowing you _couldn’t have it_. So if he could loosen the hold of _those thoughts_ , that _wanting_ , he could at least keep himself moving forward.

 _Damn._ He used to be so _good_ at this sort of thing. What had changed?

Regardless, Victor’s form was still perfect, so he nailed the jumps in his first half, and that helped keep his brain in the present moment.

He wasn’t so lucky at the second half.

It was the sequence. He had just come out of a perfect quad Salchow, about to hit his single flip—a simple, single flip—when something caught him. Was it rough spot on the ice? Had he pointed the tip of his blade too sharply? Was the angle wrong? It didn’t seem to matter now, because Victor found himself splayed out, facedown on the ice, alone. Yakov had taken Yurio away for stretches ages ago, Mila had disappeared, and Georgi hadn’t been seen since his phone had gone off half an hour ago.

Something was bleeding, at least a little. Something hurt. And it was terribly, _terribly_ quiet.

Well, it was terribly quiet for about five seconds after his impact with the unforgiving cold, before a squeaky gasp rang across the ice, followed by a yelp of Victor’s name that cut clear through to the marrow of his bones. He glanced up to see Yuuri at the gate, who dropped his skates and promptly darted across the ice, sliding around on his favorite well-worn tennis shoes like something out of a cartoon. The younger male barely managed to avoid crashing into the Russian.

“V-Vic—a-are-” Yuuri was breathing hard, but more importantly, he wasn’t getting words out. His eyes were miraculously focused, but everything else screamed _panic attack_ , from the redness of his damp eyes to the quiver of his hands as they maneuvered Victor onto his back like a Faberge egg, to the heave of his chest in short, scraping gasps.

“I’m okay,” Victor tried to say; he frankly wasn’t sure what managed to escape his throat, seeing as it was so tight. There suddenly wasn’t enough air in the rink, what with the way Yuuri was looking at him like there was absolutely nothing else in existence in the universe. It wasn’t _fair._

Yuuri, somehow, managed to run his fingers delicately over Victor’s body, checking for any breaks. His hand came back bloody from Victor’s knee and wrist and face, where his nose and forehead throbbed especially from the impact. Yuuri blinked twice and promptly wiped the crimson fluid from his hands onto his pants, and just…disappeared.

The next thing Victor knew, he was being hoisted up, Yuuri’s arm around his middle, until he could lean onto the shorter man’s frame; apparently Yuuri had run off to put on his skates. By some miraculous act, Yuuri hauled Victor’s inexplicably _useless_ frame off the ice and onto a bench, trembling and huffing all the while. The whole way there, Victor had found himself unable to focus on much beyond the warmth of his fiancé’s quivering fingertips digging into his own ribs, and the jackrabbit flutter of Yuuri’s heartbeat against his side. Victor still couldn’t breathe, not really, but it wasn’t from the pain. The pain wasn’t _that_ bad, not at all. Not physically, at least.

Yuuri removed his own skates, not bothering to put anything else on in their stead as he flitted about. He returned with a wet towel from the locker room along with his backpack. He pulled out a few self-adhesive bandages with unsteady fingers accompanied by a copious stream of tears running, completely unacknowledged, down his cheeks. He was mouthing something, but nothing came out, and Yuuri looked progressively more _frustrated_ with every failed syllable.

Victor couldn’t take any more.

He grabbed Yuuri’s face in his hands, wincing a little at the feel of the other’s frigid cheeks against the raw, open scrapes on his palms. “Why are you doing this?” He almost roared the words, but there wasn’t enough air in his lungs to get much volume out.

Yuuri blinked, brown eyes absolutely enormous from behind his glasses. He didn’t look so much surprised as he looked _afraid_. Seriously afraid. Not _cowering-under-the-covers_ anxiety attack afraid. This was _I’m being chased by a bear in real life_ afraid. He opened his mouth, closed it again, opened it again, gaping like a salmon, but nothing came out save for a few frustrated-sounding mumbles. More tears spilled over his eyelids, stinging Victor’s hands as the salt water seeped into his bleeding skin.

 _What the hell?_ He couldn’t handle this. He _couldn’t_. What the _fuck_ was he supposed to do? What _was_ all this?

“We were fighting,” Victor hissed, the words tumbling out as he tried to keep eye contact despite how he himself _still_ couldn’t really breathe right, that god-forsaken invisible hand still squeezing at his throat and scratching at the back of his neck. “You’re supposed to be mad at me. _Why_ are you doing this?”

Yuuri’s shoulders rose in a heavy breath, and his hands came up to grab Victor’s face, bandages forgotten for the moment and left to flutter to the floor. “I…” He swallowed, glanced down, looked back into Victor’s gaze, and tried again. “I love you more.”

Victor couldn’t say anything back to that. He couldn’t breathe.

“I wasn’t m-mad,” Yuuri pressed on, stuttering, his jaw shivering in Victor’s hold, which slowly dropped, leaving red smears of blood all over his fiancé’s horridly pale cheeks. “I was j-just scared. So sca-ared that I-I couldn’t… I couldn’t breathe. But I—” Yuuri’s grip on Victor’s face tightened, not enough to hurt, but almost, “But I love you more. And then you f-fel-ll. And I was-s s-scared for you. And you’re hu-urt. And I…” He took a single deep, wheezing breath, closing his eyes and practically falling forward, to his knees, forehead pressed against Victor’s. His skin was chilled, damp, sticky. “I love you more.” Yuuri shuddered. “I love you more than all of that.” There was clarity in that last statement. Such _clarity_. Like the universe wrapped up in a word, like God himself folded up in a gift box, like the spotting of a bright guiding star in an otherwise blank-blackboard sky. Like there was nothing else Yuuri could have possibly said coherently, like there was truth there that was so engrained in Yuuri’s heart and in his head and on his tongue, that nothing could stop it from bubbling out.

Victor’s heart seized in his chest, but _good_ _God_ , he could _breathe_ again. He took in one long, shaky gasp against his fiancé’s face, eyes hazy and unfocused.

He probably shouldn’t have jumped onto Yuuri. Everything hurt: his knees, his elbows, both palms, his right wrist, his nose, his forehead, his left foot, his over-tight chest…and Yuuri, well—

Yuuri was still in the midst of a _fucking panic attack_. He shouldn’t be in the position of having to comfort _Victor_. Not when Victor had no right to seek comfort in his fiancé. Not when they were supposed to be _fighting_. Not when Victor had left the apartment in a huff, slamming the door in Yuuri’s terrified, steadily breaking face. Not after being dragged off the ice like a sack of potatoes while his rescuer was in the middle of a _fucking panic attack_.

 _That_ shouldn’t have been possible.

But it happened.

_Because Yuuri loves him._

_Shit._

So of _course_ Victor had thrown himself onto his fiancé, and of _course_ they tumbled to the unforgiving ground. And of course Victor pressed his face into Yuuri’s chest as hard as he could, like he somehow _still had the right to do so_. _Ha._ What a load of rubbish, but Victor couldn’t help being selfish. Yuuri smelled like Victor’s citrus bodywash, not the vanilla-scented kind he usually used. He was wearing one of Victor’s ratty old t-shirts, teal with a messy picture of a coffee cup and a long-faded caption in French.

Victor could guess at why; Yuuri had probably dragged himself out of the house, scared and upset and clinging to anything Victor-like that he could, since he couldn’t cling to Victor himself.

Because Victor had been an insensitive _shit_ that morning. Hadn’t ever acknowledged the mid-night crying sessions Yuuri had engaged in the past few weeks. Hadn’t seen the significance in suddenly abandoning his dish-washing habit the past week, or in ignoring the request to stop leaving his clothes everywhere to be tripped upon. He hadn’t understood the _fear_ in his fiancé’s eyes at being _left alone_ all that first thing in the morning without warning, with the _fucking door left unlocked._

_Shit._

Victor was _shit._ A shitty fiancé. What the hell.

Victor couldn’t stop his tears.

“I’m so sorry, Yuuri,” he murmured into the nearest collarbone. “I’m so, so sorry.”

Yuuri didn’t reply with words, but he managed a soft whimper and tangled his hand into Victor’s hair, scratching at his scalp as gently as if he were trying to rouse Makkachin for their evening walk.

 _How ridiculous_ , Victor thought. His fiancé’s heart was whipping about at a mile a minute, as soft and quiet as the brush of a mayfly’s wings. His entire body was probably screaming at him to run away, back to a stall in the bathroom to ride it out, like he’d been doing earlier.

Everything in his body was also screaming _fragile_ to Victor own body, and Victor’s mind was screaming _you’re an asshole, Victor Nikiforov_ at himself.

But here Yuuri was, stroking Victor’s hair and trying to murmur words of comfort as the elder male cried silently into his chest. Something like “I’m sorry, too” came out in some sort of stuttery, mumbled mess of a mantra, over and over, and Victor gripped back more tightly each time.

“We still need clean you up and get some bandages on you, Victor,” Yuuri said after a while. His pulse was still dangerously, terrifyingly high, and his skin was still cold, but his frame had lost its taut edge, and he gingerly helped Victor sit upright again. He ended up having to get a second wet towel to wipe clean enough of the blood from Victor’s scrapes to be satisfied. Yuuri obviously hadn’t even bothered to look in the mirror while he was in the bathroom—or had purposely avoided it, more likely—because the smears of blood on his cheeks remained, growing dark and crusty. It probably felt disgusting.

Victor made a motion to wipe at Yuuri’s cheeks, but he never got the chance to follow through, because the next thing he knew, there was the slight sting of ointment everywhere, and self-stick bandages being applied, and feather-light kisses dotting each bandage, punctuated by a shaky breath each time. Victor blinked dumbly as Yuuri checked his pulse at his neck, following his fiancé’s eyes to the wall clock because surely they both knew that they couldn’t trust Yuuri’s own pulse as a reference. Even now, Yuuri followed protocol. Even now, Yuuri kept his priorities straight—those priorities clearly placing Victor, rendered _useless_ by a simple fall, above _himself_ and his own well-being.

_Good God._

“Yuuri,” he breathed out, feeling the column of his throat flex against the other’s fingers, “I’m so sorry.” He had to say it again. Had to say it twenty times. Fifty, maybe. Maybe all day. _Definitely_ all day.

Yuuri interrupted his thoughts. “It’s okay. And I’m sorry, too.”

“It’s not!” Victor tried to huff, but it made his chest feel funny. _It’s not okay. And you shouldn’t be apologizing._ Yuuri’s hand dropped from his neck, and the spot felt too cold all of a sudden. Victor sighed. “Let’s just go home,” he muttered, instead of the hundred-and-one things he probably should have.

Yuuri nodded, probably assuming they would because of Victor’s fall; the appraising look Yuuri gave him confirmed the thought, and something in Victor’s chest dropped a solid eight centimeters. _Damn it, you stupid, selfless katsudon._

Victor reached for Yuuri’s hand. “It’s my fault.” He stroked his fiancé’s soft knuckles, lingering on the ring that glistened at him. He hoped he didn’t need to say what the _it_ was. The many things the _it_ was: the fall, the tears, the argument, the fear. “I need to take care of you now, too,” he added, because _maybe_ , just _maybe_ he could let his heart _actually say something right for once._

He heard Yuuri gasp quietly, and so he promptly stood up, only to belatedly realize that his skates were still on, sending him toppling into his lover, who just barely managed to catch them both.

Yuuri laughed—a tiny, airy sound—and wrapped his arms around Victor. The world started clicking back into place, and something started unfurling behind Victor’s ribs. “Okay,” he whispered against the side of Victor’s neck, voice rough but not unhappy.

Victor didn’t move for a moment. “Thank-you, _dorogoy._ For always taking such good care of me.” He knew the words could have been playful, even teasing, at any other time, but he hoped with all the hope he had that Yuuri understood what his heart was trying to say.

When Yuuri pulled back enough to look him in the eye, he didn’t say a word, but he was smiling a small, secretive sort of smile, just like the one he wore when he watched over a snoring Makkachin, or caught a flushing Yurio, or whenever he obviously assumed Victor hadn’t caught him staring late at night when the Russian was sprawled across the sofa. His eyes crinkled at the corners, lids dropping to half-mast, still-messy cheeks taking on a soft pink hue beneath the bloody film. “ _Bakamono_ ,” he whispered shakily against Victor’s chapped lips. “It’s my job to.”

Victor knew exactly what Yuuri’s heart was saying as it tenderly thumped against his own in double-time. _Yuuri understood_. Of course. He always did.

Victor smiled into the approaching kiss, and took a long breath together with his fiancé.

His chest felt a little fuzzy, a little raw, but _nothing_ _hurt_.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so grateful to all my readers, for all the kudos, for every comment...thank-you for sticking with me on this adventure! We're building to one of the major climaxes. Keep your eyes peeled, it's coming very, very soon.


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